Craven Senators Kill The Auto Deal

December 11, 2008

OK, let me get this straight.Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker, backed up by
Alabama Senator Richard Shelby and South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, made it a condition
of the auto companies receiving help that the United Auto Workers agree to a reduction
of wages and benefits to the level of those paid by the Japanese companies that
have plants in those senators’ states.Desperate
for the deal,the UAW and the Democrats agreed
to a phased-in reduction, but the Republicans insisted on an immediate cut.The deal broke down, and Republicans--aided by
a few Red State Democrats (e.g. Baucus, Lincoln, Tester)--used a filibuster to
kill the bill, which would have passed on a majority vote.

Here’s what bothers me.Japanese companies, which for years have benefited from one-way deal by
which they could sell cars in the U.S.
while U.S. companies were
stymied in selling cars and trucks in Japan, set up non-union plants in low-wage, low-education, right-to-work states
where they can pay less wages and benefits to their workers. Of course, in Japan, these
same companies recognize and work with unions, but not here, where they have a
chance to undercut American firms that work with unions.Corker and these other great patriots want to
allow these Japanese companies to dictate the wages and benefits that American
companies pay their workers. It’s despicable.Imagine, for a moment, American companies being allow to operate in this
manner in Japan or South Korea. It
would not happen.

Of course, this is not just about automobile
companies.If you look at the history of
the Great Depression, what tipped that event from a global recession to depression
was precisely a series of dumb, craven--or in Keynes’ word, “feather-brained”--moves by politicians blinded by ideology or by narrow self-interest.An interest rate hike here, a balanced
budget there, a spending reduction or two, and we went from ten to twenty
percent unemployment. Don’t imagine for a moment that the failure to bailout
the auto companies isn’t one of those feather-brained moves.

Put it this way. What we have learned from the economics of
the Great Depression is that in order to end the spiral of unemployment,
government has to throw money at companies and consumers. It should be trying
to raise wages, not lower them. The Wall Street bailout was a fiasco, but it was probably better than
nothing. And the auto bailout was considerably better thought-out.Now there is a good prospect that two of the
Big Three will fail, jeopardizing, perhaps, as many as a million jobs. That’s exactly
the kind of thing that Americans should not be doing. But don’t tell that to those
great patriots Corker, DeMint, or Shelby. They know better.